Tag Archives: Neil Young

Allow me first to set the scene…Greta was asleep, Christine and I were sitting on the couch a good two-and-a-half hours into NBC’s coverage of the Closing Ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympic Games. We were tired, bleary-eyed from laughing, crying, and realizing that tomorrow morning we would have to emerge from our Olympic cocoon and face real life.

And then, just as Michael Buble (wow, is everyone Canadian?) and hundreds of hot, dancing Mountie chicks were wrapping up a rousing version of “O, Canada”, Bob Costas informed us that the network was now cutting away from their coverage — yes, you heard me, cutting away from their fake-live coverage! — to air a sneak preview episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s cheesy-ass new reality show, “The Marriage Ref”. What the hell? Say it ain’t so, Bob!

But, sadly, it was so…and like millions of American television viewers, we did not set our Tivo for NBC’s impromtu hour-long intermission, so, we missed the entire last hour of the Closing Ceremonies. Thanks, NBC!

What really pisses me off is that I checked the Tivo on Saturday night and there was no mention of a one-hour break in the Closing Ceremonies coverage at all. Which means that NBC, in their never-ending quest for total ineptitude decided to make the old switcheroo at the last minute and force feed their loyal Olympic viewers a meal of straight-up dog shit. Sorry, but that’s how it felt. After sixteen days of watching nothing but the networks of NBC, having them pull a stunt like that was like a freaking slap in the face…

And the worst thing was that our Tivo cut-off midway through “The Marriage Ref”…actually, that’s probably a good thing because that show looks super lame. But I’m sorry, NBC, you just don’t cut off something like the Closing Ceremonies at the Olympics to air a reality show. It’s disrespectful to your viewers, to Canada and hell, to the freaking Olympics in general. Seriously, I wanna write a letter to the IOC and get the games switched to another network next time…yikes…

On their website last night, the AP called NBC’s decision to cut off the Closing Ceremonies “spectacularly wrong-headed” and continued on to say that: “those enjoying the festivities were told to come back in an hour — at 11:30 p.m. on a night before work or school — for the conclusion. Incredible that NBC would wrap a show it has high hopes for, and one of its biggest stars, in ill will.”

After all the drama associated with scoring the tickets back in April, Christine and I finally saw Radiohead in concert at the Hollywood Bowl this week. Hooray!

The band was in town for a two night stay at the Bowl and we saw the Monday night show (8/25), which according to the vastly different set lists I saw for both nights, seems to have been the better of the two shows.

For not only did the band play almost all the songs from their haunting new album “In Rainbows”, but they also did a beautiful, stripped-down cover of the Neil Young classic “Tell Me Why” from his “After The Gold Rush” album. Thom Yorke’s voice on that song was straight up beautiful. Really amazing!

Man alive, when those opening chords of “Karma Police” filtered through the Bowl during their final encore, you could probably hear the audience screaming from space. That place went insane!

Also surprising was a stirring rendition of the song “Cymbal Rush” from Thom Yorke’s underrated solo venture “The Eraser”. I thought it was cool that the rest of the band let him play one of his own songs during the first encore, and the fact that he flubbed up on the piano and actually had to start again was very funny and totally endearing. Yorke actually told the crowd to “Shhh” so he could remember how the song went…hilarious!

And though the music was absolutely transcendent, the things the band did with lights and video screens was out-of-this-world amazing. I seriously doubt Christine and I will ever see a show that beautiful, I mean, those lights onstage were just gorgeous.

I’m not sure how they worked the light magic, but the stage was draped with these kind of chandelier-like tubes (they might have been glass) that lit up, changed color and even simulated rain.

As you can see from the pictures — which appear here “on loan” from fellow Radiohead fan Amy who took them at the band’s Tampa show in May, thank, Amy! — the set was almost too beautiful to look at. Truly dazzling…

And cooler still was the way the band used the Bowl’s groovy new video screens. Rather than simply filming the performance, they actually split the screens into quarters with each section highlighting a different band member playing live.

Even more amazing was the fact that there were virtually no cameras visible onstage. So, I don’t know what kind of crazy hidden camera tricks they were working, but that shit was super cool. And just when you’d get used to the arrangement of the screens on the monitors, they would change up and rotate, collide, even overlap. I joked with Christine that it was enough to give you a seizure…but wow, what a way to go!

And though some of the jackholes seated near us were a little loud and totally annoying — one poserish ho bag spoke in a fake English accent all night…grrr! — the sweet scent of some fairly primo weed wafting through the multicolor air all around us more than made up for them.

All in all, a pretty amazing night under the stars with Radiohead…wow…